Summary

In 2020, round two million grandparents have been liable for the essential wants of their grandchildren, with grandparent care concentrated in traditionally deprived communities.  Regardless of being notably weak to monetary insecurity, most grandparents are ineligible for formal assist – reminiscent of subsidies for foster mother and father, housing help, and Social Safety dependent youngster advantages – as a result of they increase their grandchildren exterior of the foster care system.  Utilizing the Well being and Retirement Research and American Neighborhood Survey,this research paperwork how grandparent caregivers differ from typical grandparents when it comes to money and time spent on grandchildren, demographic traits, and financial assets.  It then evaluates how their funds would enhance if eligibility for youngster advantages have been aligned with the extra lenient tax standards for claiming a dependent grandchild.

The paper discovered that:

• Grandparent care is concentrated amongst single-female, Black, and Hispanic households.
• Though grandparent caregivers have extra duty than typical grandparents, they’ve nearly no private financial savings.
• Round half of grandparent caregivers have claimed Social Safety, and so would qualify for youngster advantages if the coverage have been modified.
• For these households, substitute charges would enhance by 16 share factors on common, with Black and Hispanic caregivers experiencing the best enchancment.

The coverage implications are:

• Increasing eligibility for dependent youngster advantages might be a useful gizmo for policymakers to cut back the monetary pressure of caregiving.
• Particularly, youngster advantages would attain probably the most weak households who don’t file taxes.